2014 Lincoln MKZ
The
2014 Lincoln MKZ places many of its bets on its distinctive styling, as
well as its modern technology and best-in-class fuel economy.
- Interior / Exterior »
The
2014 Lincoln MKZ is both sleek and substantial, wearing more character
up front than its predecessor had in its entire summation. We’d say that
it looks like a Volvo from near every angle–except for its front
quarters–and it’s perhaps the most attractive vehicle Lincoln has built
in recent history.
The
MKZ is in many ways a product of the brands Ford once owned–just look
at its rear decklid, and you’ll see some very Swedish-looking influence
there. It’s smooth and aerodynamic from head to toe–with exception to
its mustached grille–something Lincoln claims to as an homage to the
1938 Zephyr. But, it’s the car’s thickness and length that really set it
apart from Lincolns of yore. It’s not beefy–it’s far too elegant for
that–but it still wears a bulk that other Ford products just don’t carry
at this point.
It’s what’s not there that really distinguishes the MKZ’s interior.
There aren’t traditional shifters of any sort, but rather a set of shift
buttons that flank the car’s LCD screen. Without the shift lever, the
screen takes over the interior, and stylists have made the most of it
putting metallic parentheses around it, lowering the console in front of
it, trimming out space beneath the armrests to accentuate the center of
the car as much or more than the coolly glowing gauges themselves. It’s
a striking cue, one that frames the whole driving experience as you
continually forget there’s no lever to fall to hand. All that digested,
there’s a layer of Lincoln left unapplied to the MKZ, one we really hope
is drizzled into the batter of future products. The MKZ is almost too
spartan: the winged grille and walnut trim are everybody’s idea of
understated elegance, and the pushbuttons are a clever detail. Beyond
that, the MKZ doesn’t have the depth of personality that even some
ancient Lincolns with mixed virtues (Mark VIII LSC, anyone?) laid right
in the driver’s lap. The glitz is gone–and in the process, Lincoln’s
shorn off a lot of glamour, the one resource they could mine forever
from history. It’s left hidden behind keywords like “modern” and
“responsibly harvested” that aspire to Audi, but fall just short.- Performance »
There’s
never been a Lincoln as athletic as the 2014 MKZ. It seems almost
completely out of place when you compare it to the last generation
model, and completely unrelated to the Town Car that’s since been
retired. We’re not sure yet whether it’s a blessing or a curse, but we
do know that it’s going to take a minute to recalibrate our expectations
of the brand.
The
MKZ shares the Fusion’s electric power steering, but the strut and
multi-link suspension gets adaptive shocks with three driver-selectable
settings in the MKZ. In nearly 200 miles of driving over interstates,
secondary and surface streets, we chose the Sport mode over normal and
comfort most often, to our surprise. In the Fusion, the very taut ride
is entertaining for enthusiasts, but in a family sedan, it’s a
borderline choice. In the MKZ, the Sport mode produces nearly the same
ride firmness and induces some weight in the steering that feels the
most natural of any of its settings, though there’s still very little
feedback. In the other modes, the MKZ struggles for that level of
composure, trading its absorbent ride for something less nuanced, and
mostly just “soft.” We’ll concede user-selectable steering is an easy
gimmick to put on the latest electric-steer cars, mostly to no harm.
Going to an adaptive suspension that doesn’t notably improve handling,
instead of choosing more talented shocks and tires, sounds like
overkill.
Three powertrains are offered in the new MKZ, and two of them are
essentially identical to their counterparts in our Best Car To Buy 2013,
the Ford Fusion. The base MKZ gets a new turbocharged four-cylinder
engine, coupled to a six-speed automatic with paddle shift controls,
with either front- or all-wheel drive. Rated at 240 horsepower with 270
pound-feet of torque, it’s good for an EPA-rated 22/33 mpg. A 0-60 mph
time of about 7 seconds makes even this base MKZ a brisk performer, but
it’s a powertrain that can befuddle drivers with its coarse sound at the
top of its rev range–where noise evades the active sound cancellation
system that’s standard equipment. What sounds perfectly refined for the
price of a Ford Fusion–we said it’s “the most vibration-free, quietest
installation of this powertrain we’ve yet experienced”–doesn’t make as
good a grade in something costing a few thousand dollars more, wearing a
premium badge. 
A revamped version of the MKZ’s 3.7-liter V-6 returns, with 300
horsepower and a choice of front- or all-wheel drive, and the same
carryover six-speed automatic transmission controlled by dash-mounted
pushbuttons, one of a host of new touches Lincoln’s using to distinguish
the MKZ from the related Ford Fusion. Fuel economy’s estimated at 18/26
mpg with all-wheel drive. We haven’t yet been able to sample this
version, but past experience with the same drivetrain and impressions
from other reviews would have us ticking the extra-cost box for it, even
though gas mileage dips. 
Finally, there’s the MKZ Hybrid, with the new generation of Ford’s
hybrid drivetrain. The new 2.0-liter four-cylinder hybrid drivetrain has
lithium-ion batteries and a continuously variable transmission, better
packaging and lower weight, and according to the EPA, earns 45 mpg
across the board. See our Green section for more details on the numbers
and whether or not they’re truly in reach–in terms of raw performance,
the MKZ Hybrid’s destined to be the least emotive performer, but in our
related experience in the Fusion Hybrid, it’s still the most engaging
mass-market hybrid on the road today, though acceleration is noticeably
slower, steering feel is less quick and the low-rolling-resistance tires
thrum sometimes at highway speeds.
The
Lincoln MKZ was completely overhauled last year, and it now embodies
the future of Lincoln’s design language. This follows what is
essentially the third fresh start for the company since the late 1990s,
and in this case, it’s first car in what Ford is calling a reinvention
of the entire brand.
The 2014 MKZ gives us some encouragement for what Lincoln has up its
sleeve for future products, but it also tells us some hard truths about
what the brand is today. Where Cadillac has successfully redesigned its
brand from the ground up over the past 10 years, Lincoln has faltered
along the way. The MKZ has been one of its only shining stars–bringing
in a younger demographic of shoppers with improved gas mileage and
modern technologies–but it’s done so by essentially removing itself from
anything else Lincoln has stood for the past. 
And it’s even more distant from the past, and from the rest of the
lineup, in 2014 trim. The massive wings and Weber-grade grilles of the
recent past have been put out for tag sale. This MKZ has a subtler take
on luxury, more along the lines of Lexus and Volvo. Those Volvo
influences are especially noticeable at the rear, and inside, with the
floating effect penned into the center console. The bits of Lincoln
heritage? They’re reduced to the handsomely scaled-down grille and to
the badgework. It’s as globally clean and subdued as mid-size luxury
sedans come. To its credit, the MKZ has substantial visual heft, and
some pretty, elegantly spare angles without fender-vent nonsense or
other gimmicky cues. The barest amount of excess is left for the inside,
where the lack of a shift lever is the eye-popping detail. It dukes it
out with the dominant LCD touchscreen, both playing the modern card for
maximum impact. We’re not sure there’s a single identifiably “Lincoln”
element in either of them, or for that matter, anywhere to be found. For
those who want a sporty, enthusiastic performer, there’s never been a
better Lincoln than this MKZ. It carves out better performance and gas
mileage from a new trio of powertrains. The base 2.0-liter turbo four is
rated at up to 33 mpg highway; it’s a strong straight-line performer,
with or without all-wheel drive, but it can seem a little coarse for
this luxury application. An uprated, 300-horsepower, 3.7-liter V-6
returns, and it may be worth the cost of the upgrade for smoother
performance alone. With either, the MKZ is truly quick, and the
paddle-shifted automatic–actuated by pushbuttons on the dash–snaps off
gearchanges well enough, though the Fusion’s manual transmission would
be a fun option, in another world, one with a console made for shift
levers. The MKZ Hybrid returns as the luxury vehicle with the best gas
mileage, Lincoln says. Originally rated at 45 mpg combined (45 mpg city,
45 mpg highway), the company agreed in June 2014 to lower that rating
to 38 mpg combined (38 mpg city, 37 mpg highway) and reimburse existing
owners after it discovered errors in both its lab-test measurements and
its calculations for aerodynamic drag. 
On the safety front, the MKZ pulls together nearly every piece of
technology that’s been added to other Ford and Lincoln products over the
past few years–everything from a rearview camera to navigation systems
governed by MyLincoln Touch, to inflatable rear seatbelts, to newly
added features like lane-keeping assist and adaptive cruise control. The
MKZ also integrates parking assist, which takes control of the steering
and guides the sedan into a tight parallel parking spot, with the
driver keeping control of braking. And it’s an IIHS Top Safety Pick+,
singled out as one of the safest vehicles on the market. MyLincoln
Touch’s voice controls take the reins over secondary controls, with
buttons on the steering wheel offering redundant ways into the complex
system. Ford’s spent some time refining the system and reducing the
amount of information on each display screen; it’s still a system with a
steep learning curve and sub-optimal results, but nothing else would
enable that starkly imaginative console design. In other respects the
MKZ’s luxury touches are fairly conventional. There’s plenty of real
wood trim and leather is standard. The finishing touch is a stunning
one, though: a 15-square-foot available panoramic roof that slides back
as one piece, exposing the new MKZ’s cabin to the sun. With its
Fusion-like ride firmness and meaty-feeling electric steering, the MKZ
is sharp and more aggressive at tackling turns than even the
last-generation version. It comes standard with Lincoln Drive Control,
which lets drivers adjust settings for shocks, steering, stability and
traction control, and active-noise cancellation. Lincoln says the result
is better ride and handling with the adaptive settings, but the
trade-off versus the Fusion’s conventional shocks seems a zero-sum gain
to us. In anything but Sport, the MKZ feels less composed and
comfortable than it ought to. Softer tires and more progressive,
expensive shocks might have been an easier solution, but maybe not as
mechanically distinctive from the Ford iteration. We predict two
questions coming to every new Lincoln MKZ driver. The first one’s easy
to answer: “Is that the new MKZ?” The second one’s much more difficult
to come to grips with: “What makes it a Lincoln?” Strip away the grilles
and badges, and we’re not exactly sure. In the greater scheme, it’s
Lincoln’s Olds Aurora–a car that’s satisfying more for what’s not true
to its heritage, than for what is. And in this case, it’s tough to
forget that there’s hardware just as good, just as interesting, almost
as opulent, just a rung down its own corporate ladder. Photo Gallery: Lincoln
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